Urban Landscapes

U.N. Starship Bono; commissioned July 24, 2246 - 15 x 24



and the Transmigration of Form...

Three No. 3 - 16 x 20

The works on this post were developed for a show last year at the Zen/Italia Gallery, in the Little Italy Historic District, Cleveland, Ohio. Abstractions derived from urban landscapes, intended to play with the relativity of time and space. The descriptive essay at the end of the post, even though it's written in art gallery hype, is fairly successful in describing these graphic representations of the Buddhist dharma; the interdependent nature of reality, impermanence, emptiness of ego and form, and illusions created by ego. Or something like that. Always granting that marketing language is hype, not truth.

Skyline Totem No. 1 - 18 x 42




Rock Halls in the Mist - 16 x 24

Heroic Women and Their Sticks No. 5 - 16 x 24

Lovers Adjacent Yet Incongruent No. 8 - 18 x 25

Dinner at Mama Santa's - 16 x 20

Replications in a Nearby Dimension - 20 x 25

Greyhound Bus Station No. 7 - 16 x 20

Bridge of Eyes - small, 12 x 30 large, 15 x 40

Peaceful Fire - 18 x 42

UFO Fleet Emerging from Time - 12 x 21

Settler's Landing, Cleveland, Ohio - January 23, 2239 - 16 x 20

Your comments are, of course, welcome.

Urban Landscapes

and the Transmigration of Form

works by DHLarsen, presented by

Zen/Italia Gallery

12610 Mayfield Road, Cleveland, Ohio

in the Little Italy Historic Distric

These works are the result of a rebirth in personal creativity. They owe much to the nature and potential of digital imaging, offering new ways to encounter and manipulate form, texture and color. Each rendering contains elements of the familiar world in which we live, but often fail to see – blinded by the delusions of the false self.

The life that can be seen and photographed implies the great mystery, rarely seen and never photographed. Focus, careful composition and thoughtful selection of elements, are the basic ingredients of images intended to observe and interpret a world both simple and multi-dimensional, yielding insight to its complexity through the transmigration of form, from the secure and familiar, to the strange and chaotic.

It is tempting to refer to these images as surrealistic; tempting, but not accurate. The surrealistic rubric implies a psychology of repressed depths -- especially sexual symbolism, and the erotic language of dreams. But such is not the case here. Everything you see is on the surface, wherever that may be. These images are not meant to be taken seriously – at least not too seriously.

However, they are meant to create a reaction in the viewer, transforming elements of the urban landscape into sculptures of the unexpected, analogous to the transmigration of human souls from life to life. The familiar and apparently permanent are liberated from ordinary existence, to embrace their impermanent nature. Colors, textures and the forms themselves are caught up in the process, transcending consensus reality to embrace a wider and deeper meaning, the nature of their origins and departures dependent on arising causes and conditions.

The role played by electronics in the creation of art risks a negative evaluation similar to the disdain directed toward photography itself, when it emerged as a form of self-expression in the mid-nineteenth century. The implication was – and is – that art created with the aid of technology, is not quite the real thing. It took the work of innumerable masters of photography, to redeem the art from the scorn of its critics.

The only appropriate defense to the objections of technophobes is to bring a full measure of integrity to the creative process; to respect the viewer, and to avoid cheap tricks. To this end, these transmigrations of form offer the promise of honesty. They begin with images subject to the committed habits of discipline. The focus is sharp, the exposure precise, the composition framed with all elements carefully chosen. The color and texture at least begin as nature intends; and all of the artistic decisions are human.

DHL